Popularising technical research & editorial support

Leonie regularly works with researchers, academics, and organisations to transform technical scientific findings and reports into material that is more accessible to a non-specialist audience, using journalistic techniques and storytelling.

She may write the material herself, or work in collaboration with the researchers involved.

She also assists with content editing on documents that are scientifically technical, but nevertheless target specialist readers such as technocrats or other researchers.

Recent projects

EPRU & EfD

Leonie works with researchers from the Environmental Policy Research Unit (EPRU) and theEnvironment for Development (EfD) initiative, assisting them to communicate their findings to policymakers and the public. EPRU is based at the University of Cape Town’s School of Economics, and is part of the Environmental for Development (EfD) initiative at Gothenburg University in Sweden. EfD is a network of environmental economists in the developing world who aim to bring evidence-based ideas to inform sustainable development. Includes training and mentoring academics in writing using news formats for a popular and non-scientific audience (January 2015 until present).

highlights

The following articles were written on behalf of, or in partnership with, the academics and practitioners involved, and were placed with the target publications:

African Centre for Cities

African Climate & Development Initiative

Early in 2018, Leonie produced a six-part series of feature articles on the impact of climate change on semi-arid environments in southern Africa with the University of Cape Town’s African Climate & Development Initiative (ACDI) and the Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions (ASSAR) project.

The articles targeted key newspapers in South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana, the first of which have been published here:

Energy Research Centre

Leonie worked with researchers at the University of Cape Town’s Energy Research Centre (ERC) in 2015 to assist them with writing and communicating the outcomes of the five-country Mitigation Action Plans and Scenarios (MAPS) teams outputs. MAPS includes South Africa, Peru, Colombia, Chile and Brazil and is described as: ‘a collaboration amongst developing countries to establish the evidence base for long term transition to robust economies that are carbon efficient. In this way MAPS contributes to ambitious climate change mitigation that aligns economic development with poverty alleviation’.

Also assisted SSN and CDKN with MAPS - the Mitigation and Adaptation Plans & Scenarios process - offering editorial support on certain blogs and briefs (± 2012 to 2014).

Stellenbosch University's new voices in science

Assisted the Stellenbosch University Postgraduate & International Office with training and editorial support for post graduate students in how to communicate their findings to non-academic audiences though the New Voices in Sciencecompetitions and resulting magazines (2014and 2015).